A WOMAN ON WOMEN.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 9, Issue 591, 10 December 1920, Page 1 (Supplement)

A WOMAN ON WOMEN.

Now and again, when thinking women get together, they discuss their own sex. Judgment on women oy women usually gets down to rock oottom. And, although petticoat judgment may be petty in particular cases, it is not always so. Eve, as judge, can be fair as well as cruel. • But there is never any doubt about the verdict.

Putting aside prejudice or any de* sire to stand up for her own sex, an impartial woman usually owns up chat she would prefer to work under a man than under another woman; that women are not so broadminded as men; that they are more niggardly and "pennywisc;" that they are still "shackled by cctnuries of submission <«nd dependence on man for the necessities of life; in short, that men arc m many ways finer than women in their viewpoint. Behind her judicial wisdom, Eve, as judge, recognises those long centuries in the caged life that have stunted woman's view-point. Well she knows the competition of sex that has strangled the birth of big ideas and ideals. It is no mystery to her that many women arc parasites on men instead of being partners to them. And when she sees the bachelor woman of to-day unable to dispense ncr vaunted hospitality with the gay abandon of the bachelor male, she can look back to that long line of foremothers forced to study every penny in order that the two ends of domestic life might meet. In the womb of the past she looks for reasons why woman has not yet—with all her freedom and modern advantages—climbed to the true level of man.

Given true sex equality, there id not the gleam of prophecy in her eye, "another fifty years, and then ask me if men and women are equal." Given true sex equality, there is no telling what another half-century may produce; Eve may grow harder, because she will be a soldier of the world; and she will probably acquire more of that veneer which civilised humanity uses to cloak the eternal savage, and her brain will develop to an amazing extent under finer and truer happiness, but she will still be —woman. .

And the most primeval thing in the world is woman.

Throughout the ages she has remained elementally the same. Conf?ont her with a crisis and the Eve of to-day, whether she be blue-stock-ing or peasant maid, is the Eve who lived when the world was young. Her vmnted theories go down like ninepins when love, most primeval of passions, sweeps her off her feet. Hate end sex competition have still power to bring out the dormant tigress in her nature. In her self-sacrifice she is superb. She can never forget the beautiful fact that she is the vessel of life, and in defence of her young she can be brave as any vixen of the wild.

Let thousands of years roll over her head arid she will still find glory in submission, a divine happiness in pouring out herself and her gifts upon the beloved, and, like the cave ancestress, she will hold out her hands to the strong. M.C.L.